Evaluation of biological seed treatment of wheat for the control of seed-borne Fusarium culmorum

A 2-year field study was conducted for two experiments to evaluate the effe ctiveness of selected antagonists against Fusarium culmorum. Durum winter w heat seeds 'Vitron', naturally infected by F. culmorum at the rare of 20 %, were coated with conidial suspensions (1 x 10(8) conidia/ml) of five antag onistic fungi: Trichoderma atroviride 312, T. longibrachiatum 9, T. harzian um 144, Gliocladium roseum 11 and Penicillium frequentans and added to talc um powder for the first experiment. For the second one, seeds were treated with talcum + yeast (0.2 %) and G. roseum or T. harzianum. All biological t reatments, compared to the infected control, gave a significant increase in emergence, winter survival, number of heads and yield, and lower disease i ncidence and severity in both experiments in both years. The addition of ye ast slightly reduced the number of diseased plants. These results show that F. culmorum infecting wheat can be partially controlled by biological seed dressing treatments and even if chemicals (prochloraz + mancozeb, guazatin e, tebuconazole + thiram) provide the best disease control, they do not ass ure a complete absence of the disease at the end of the crop season.